Hour 1: Alright, my first 7-hour session is in the books. As promised, I have put together something a little different here. I am going to detail out my experience of what I can only describe as a welcomed roller coaster of torture. I took some very detailed notes throughout the session during each break as well as how I felt the following day.
I have never really been able to find much satisfactory information on this topic, so I am going to layout the timeline and describe my mental and physical states for any who may be curious and interested in the tattoo experience.
Sorry dummies. No photos in this lengthy post, 😉.
Let’s get started.
Upon arrival at noon, the artist and I finalized the details of the tattoo. It took about an hour before we began. To be honest, I was so effing excited from the months of anticipation that I didn’t have a nerve in the world. I just wanted to get started.
This shop maintains a really high profile and tattoos a lot of celebrities. Apparently, they were going to be quite busy that day so we went next door to their office space to work. I was initially a little annoyed that we wouldn’t be in the main shop because I kinda liked the idea of being amidst the bustle. Nevertheless, the artist insisted there’s benefit to the privacy.
I am about as below Joe Average as it gets as far as their clientele is concerned. I kind of feel like that’s why I was deprioritized into the grungy office space.
I am definitely such a diva that this little slight annoyed me, but I understand the need to prioritize valued customers. I suppose it’s not so important to me that I’d make a stink because I really just wanted to get the tattoo. And this is as much as I need to vent about it.
Aaaand here we go…
Hour 2: Honestly, the needling really does not hurt all that much. I have always described the pain as comparable to scratching a really bad sunburn. It’s annoying but it doesn’t really hurt.
This first hour did crawl by though. I swear every 15 seconds felt like one whole minute. Not sure what that was about. I must have been more nervous than I was willing to admit. Once you get started, you begin to fully realize that you signed up for 7 hours of pain. Even though you’re fine at the moment, you now comprehend that it’s gonna be a loooonnng day.
Despite the acknowledgement about being “deprioritized,” my main takeaway so far was definitely the extreme level of professionalism from the artist. This was really a full-service experience. They had a wide array of different snacks and beverages for me as needed. It was like a tattoo spa. I definitely got what I paid for. Even in the grungy office space, I felt well-accommodated and relaxed.
The artist was very gracious and honest. He set very clear expectations for me from the start. He detailed a rough timeline with built-in breaks and emphasized that it would be a bit of a physical/mental roller coaster. I appreciate that level of transparency and had a really good sense that he was a highly experienced professional even beyond his artwork. He created a really amazingly comfortable environment that set the tone for the whole session. There was an immediate trust he cultivated because of his professionalism.
We talked in depth about the artist’s need to develop rapport, evaluate me for signs of fatigue, faintness, and then formulate a strategy to distract me from the incessant pain and trauma over the course of the entire session.
Some people listen to music as a distraction. Some clients just sit on their phone. Since I knew I was going to write about it, I thought it seemed more interesting and personal to engage in conversation. That is as distracted as I wanted to be.
I don’t really believe in the methodology of intentionally averting myself from the pain as a coping mechanism. I don’t like the idea of that kind of resistance. I’d rather just allow myself to feel it, evaluate it, and be comfortable to communicate if I needed a break or was feeling faint.
I think this is a good time to acknowledge that I went into this experience with the intention of being highly analytical. It’s most certainly possible that I was overly hypersensitive to my own thoughts and feelings throughout this session. That’s to admit that dramatization might be in full effect. But that is literally what I do with every topic I cover. This is about deep-diving to the limit and then sharing my thoughts and feelings on the experience.
… And so begins the really wild emotional roller coaster.
Like I said, the first hour crawled. My body hadn’t been exposed to physical trauma of this nature in a long time. It’s bizarre because it doesn’t hurt, but it’s still a battle and it wears you down. It was a very raw fight or flight mental state. I felt like it was a struggle that I wasn’t ready for.
I was tense and unconsciously clenching my fists and jaw. I started to feel really self-conscious about everything I was doing and saying. It was a state of resistance and fear that I might not be able to make it through a full session.
Then we took a timely break after 60 minutes. This all plays into the professionalism of the artist. He knows what to expect and understands this process so well that he knows when breaks are needed. He knows that he has to be evaluating me and can’t always rely on me to notify him when I need a break.
The reason he needs that awareness is the mental battle I am undergoing will insist I need a break, but because I’m a super tough dude, I’ll feel like I can hold out longer. I mean, breaks are for soft wimps. Am I right or am I right?
I got stuck in that quagmire several times. This is why developing rapport is important, because he notices when I’ve gone totally silent and am lost in the battle at which point he’ll call a break or suggest I have something to eat or drink. The reality is it’s an asinine societal practice that instills expectations of toughness in us as if it’s some sort of contest. I’m not getting a tattoo to prove anything, especially my toughness.
In actuality, I got quite vulnerable during this process. I needed to depend on him at times to reassure and guide me. I have no shame admitting this. It’s nice to feel like you can trust someone to get you from A to B. This is why I’d recommend this artist to anyone.
So at break one, I arrived at the following conclusion…
This process is a really fascinating method of torture.
Torture has intense connotations, but this is what was happening and that’s why I referred to it earlier as ‘welcomed torture.’
He is inflicting constant pain onto me but also has developed a very positive and trusting rapport. If his intent was to extract information from me, then after a while he had me dead to rights, wearing me down mentally with trauma yet also being my friend.
I expressed this to him when we sat down to start again and he said, “man, you have no idea the types of things people end up saying to me after a while. It can get very personal and very weird…”
He broke me in 60 minutes, haha. Now, just so you know, I’m not accepting any secrets until this half-sleeve is complete. After all, I don’t wanna risk ruining my status as a tried and true vault of secure secrets.
Hours 3 and 4: This is when the real attrition set in. The break was sufficient for me to boost myself up and feel ready to go. My adrenaline kicked in pretty quickly. I was snacking on some nutritional bars and staying hydrated. We had a good flow going and some entertaining casual conversations. Tattoo artists have some very interesting stories, especially if they really started in the pits.
Any time a story starts with “I was tattooing this guy on his dining room table…” you have my full attention.
So, hour 3 was honestly an agreeable low-stress experience.
Then oops. There goes the adrenaline.
Forgive my brain chemistry naïveté, but this is just how I identified and understood the process. The post adrenaline feeling was a gradual shift in my emotional and mental state. It was a slow and steady fatigue. I don’t know if it was more about the intrusion that occurred or that my irritability was setting in, but I got a little moody.
As I mentioned, this is a high profile place and – you guessed it – there was a celeb there that day. I don’t know if I signed a non-disclosure amidst all of the releases, but she’s pretty famous right now and was in for a new tattoo. So she and her entourage came into my office space to do an interview.
How. Dare. They.
This whole disruption threw me completely out of rhythm. All of a sudden my artist and I weren’t free to continue our conversation. We kinda just sat in silence and eavesdropped and then I started to crash. I think it was more bad timing for me because nothing she was doing or saying was particularly obnoxious. She was quite pleasant, down to earth, and attractive. She also apologized for the disruption as they left. She should have been a welcomed distraction. I think I was just in a bitchy state of mind. I blame brain chemistry.
I really spiraled in Hour 4. I got physically and mentally depleted. Whatever personality I had from the start faded. I also think I peed four times that hour. I guess that’s my body trying to dispose of the toxins??
Eventually, I really just lost the will to communicate. I experienced a really deep and low crash. It was laced with a little bit of anxiety but it wasn’t terribly severe. I just felt really down and depleted. I think a bit of hopelessness began to take over before we decided to take a pivotal lunch break.
45 Minute Lunch: As I was waiting for lunch to be delivered — all which is paid for by the artist (rapport, rapport, rapport…) — I was pacing through the room and jotting down more notes. At this point, I was really doubting my ability to persevere through another 3-4 hours. I was also noticeably more clumsy as I was walking around. I kept bumping into walls and chairs for the remainder of the day. Obviously, this makes sense. I’m fatigued, exposing my body to toxins, and losing blood. I thought it was a funny little detail. I mean I’m less clumsy when I’m drunk than I was in this state.
Anyway, I was so depleted that I was fearful I wouldn’t be able to eat my lunch. We stood in the kitchen with a couple of artists and they carried on conversation sharing old stories, etc. I literally couldn’t muster up a word to contribute the entire time. It was a state of involuntary silence. I forced the food down and just waited for it to provide me with a jolt of energy. The whole break was one big lingering physical/mental crash.
I was a little tentative about getting going again. The artist once again kept me afloat and reassured me the first 20 minutes will be tough, but then I’ll enter a zone and the rest of the session will fly by. I had no choice but to trust him.
Hours 5 and 6: And he was right. The physical pain gets progressively more intense for the remainder of the session. When someone is needling away on you for hours, your skin starts to get really inflamed and swollen. Obviously, the artist strategizes and tries not to work in all the same area but then again sometimes, he has no choice. Oof. This hurts. Quite a bit.
Eventually, I do find my way into the zone he foreshadowed. Hour 5 was a lot like Hour 3 in that respect. It was just working and grinding in a really good way.
Predictably, my communication started to fade again and I got a little hazy. I also felt a little self-conscious about my lack of ability to communicate. I also had absolutely no reasonable sense for time anymore. I was transitioning into a new state.
Hour 6 and basically for the remainder of the session I found myself in a really interesting place. That place was that beautiful state of indifference. I was at my weakest mentally and at peak pain messaging physically, but I just didn’t care. This is a truly fascinating place to arrive. I’ve been here before…
(This is where I plug my book, Go Follow Yourself, which has a chapter on indifference)
It’s fascinating to be going through this torturous experience and literally not really have any sort of ability to feel or care about it. I guess I spent my feelings quota for the day?? Like Whoa. And like, Coool.
Any moments of worry or second guessing my ability to persevere were fleeting and I just relaxed into a bit of loopiness. The pain was pretty excruciating too, but it was… fine.
Hour 7: I don’t have a great memory of what happened at this point, so I’m just going to show you my exact notes. I know I was checked the eff out and ready to be done for the day. I think my notes really say it all.
- very drained
- painful but indifferent
- zombieish but coherent
- crashy / clumsy
- two thumbs up on professionalism / attention to detail / knowing customer
Notes after Session 1 was in the Books
- loads of numbness
- relief
- satisfaction
- emotional: like a post-adrenaline rush inclination to cry
- excited
- ever so slightest headache
- exhausted
Next Day: Overall, I couldn’t be happier with the result and I cannot wait to get back in there for the remainder. I was sore like a sunburn is sore. I was really self-conscious and hypersensitive about what people thought of it and might think of it. I was also just experiencing some paranoia that I’d mess up my aftercare and ruin the healing.
At that point, I went back and read the “My Tattoos and Me” articles I had previously published in order to reassure myself, which was quite effective.
Ultimately, I achieved my goal. It looks very cool. Most of my triceps and lower half of my arm is all inked up. YAY!
I have another full session on June 8. I’ll likely post a photo afterward because I’ll just be too damn excited.
Stay tuned for Round 2 and thanks for reading!
